odiousgambit's Blog

How Computer Games Cheat

This is not about Casino computers, which tower in honesty compared to general games on the home computer.

I am posting what I have posted before in other forums, new comments are in italics.

Others have made these observations, I like to consolidate them.

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PROBLEMS WITH GAMES ON THE COMPUTER

# A player learns to play without a using a rulebook, and no rulebook governs the play. Generally, you have to just take the plunge and see if you have the computer savvy to operate it.

# The Black Box Problem A. Just what exactly are the rules anyway? There will be no assurance anywhere that the most basic assumptions are accurate. As far as I know, you can't buy a computer game that simulates a simple game of solitaire in cards that will assure you that you are indeed playing with a deck of 52 cards. Not in the game when it's up, not on the box, not anywhere. You may assume so after playing it a while, but I have heard of some that are either harder or easier to win than using a real deck of cards.

# The Black Box Problem B. How it is determined that one side wins or loses a battle or campaign is anybody's guess. Common sense evaluation seemed to work sometimes, but for Boardgamers this is never going to be a satisfactory state of affairs. At some point you are in danger of finding that the computer has just declared itself the winner, unless you dial back the AI; then you are in danger of being bored by winning too easily.

# The Black Box Problem C. Once you increase the AI, you might be hoping that the vast computing power of your machine kicks in and starts to out-think you; like Spock playing the computer in chess on Star Trek, you'll be hoping that you'll just find a level of AI in your mightily-powered opponent that roughly matches you in pondering strategy and problems. Lo and behold, though, what you find is that the computer has simply increased the manpower of the opposition. There may be no sense whatsoever that the AI is actually getting better in its strategy. The Risk computer games seem to do this for sure

# The Black Box Problem D. After you begin to get a handle on what seems to be some rules in the Black Box, such as hey, you can't do this, you find that the computer opponent is not held to the same restriction. Often this is a matter of the player not being able to “see” various units for various reasons, but it becomes clear that the computer is not held to these same restrictions. The Modernized Risk Game, Risk II or whatever, just for the computer [that I have] with all sorts of variants to the original game, cheats like crazy in C and D problems.

# The Black Box Problem In General. The Computer simply cheats. This is manifested at various times and in various ways, and maddeningly there will be no acknowledgment of it. A player won't be able to ascertain what aspects of the cheating he can tolerate because what exactly he is up against can't be determined.

I have been told, "do not expect to see human-like AI in your lifetime".

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CHESS COMPUTER GAMES CHEAT TOO [well, OK, in a tolerable manner perhaps]

I find for now it is telling that IBM has flatly refused to take Kasparov up on his very do-able challenge. Kasparov was finally beaten by their "Big Blue" of course, but K. claimed that they had used the well-known tactic of studying your opponent's games. He challenged them to go ahead and enter Big Blue in tournaments, then, to allow for the same counter-tactic, predicting (IIRC) it would not even be able to sustain Grandmaster ratings, much less win. Since this would be so clearly do-able, you have to figure the IBM team knew he was right, declining to do so though it has been something like 10-15 years since the challenge. For us humans, we have to cling to this to be able to claim that possibly some human somewhere is always going to be better than the machine, unless, well, something gets manipulated?

For your home game, computer chess has the black box as well, doing things you would never allow a human opponent to do. Would you let your opponent browse a huge databank of "opening book" while you are just on your own? Would you allow your opponent to re-arrange the board to his heart's content while pondering moves, while you are not even allowed to touch a single piece? IBM says " During the match with Kasparov, [Big Blue] averaged 126 million positions per second." Now that is what I call re-arranging the board!

Nonetheless Computer Chess probably shines as an example of a computer game that ultimately is tolerable in spite of how the AI goes about things.

Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science

Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science by Jeff Meldrum

I decided to make this a blog post. I should probably explain that there have been a couple of threads that dipped a bit into Bigfoot, and that there was this book by Jeffrey Meldrum out there. I did read this book and thought I would not so much review it as just give you my thoughts.

I was expecting this, and found it again to be the case: when you read a book taking a controversial position on something, you tend to forget the author has placed himself in the position of advocacy without counter-argument. You have signed on to allowing this to happen by reading the book, yet it is easy to forget you sort have set yourself up this way. Unless the book is really bad, the next thing you know, you start to wonder if some of the claims don't have something to them. One needs to be on guard against becoming a convert, forgetting you have only heard one side of the argument. I've seen a similar phenomenon with UFO folks... "believers" they call themselves usually. And actually there is a competent physicist on their side these days, and an astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, that can get to you. But I digress.

It may seem unlikely, but Meldrum IMO is capable of swaying skeptics, at least to the point of acknowledging some aspects of the evidence can't be so easily dismissed as thought. Anyone with an open mind, that is, which is what he says he has, is all. There were indeed moments reading his book where his evident sincerity, if nothing else, made you want to acknowledge there must be something to it all. Clearly the guy is reasonably competent; he makes the case that you have to take certain evidence seriously, particularly the footprints in many cases. Ironically, the footprint evidence for me has always been almost unbearably ridiculous looking. Yet it is amongst his specialties to examine such evidence, so who am I to say that it is not worthy? He is quite good at relating how hard it would be to fake the better evidence. I can no longer assume, as I did before, that it is just a matter of putting on fake feet and walking around. He is quite experienced
with debunking such clumsy attempts, and relates those times he directly investigated fresh evidence, and how hard it would be to fake it at all, much less fool someone like himself.

Unfortunately, he was unable to get me to think of the famous film footage [the Patterson-Gimlin film] as possibly worthy evidence. In this matter, and in showing some other rare photos, he tends to cite other investigators rather than give his own conclusions, but he lets it be known he considers this evidence to likely be "for real" as we might put it. Other evidence investigated by others is also considered in the book. And it should be said he acknowledges quite a bit of the evidence put out there is hoaxed in some cases, or may be explainable as mis-identification in others.

Am I now a Bigfoot believer, or at least someone swayed into accepting that some of the evidence for such a creature is worthy? No, not on reflection. The best I can say is I wouldn't be able to explain how the evidence was faked or otherwise explained away in some cases. I still put the chance that it was left by an unknown creature as an extremely remote possibility. But I will also admit I found the book hard to put down.

Attach "in my humble opinion" to all the below.

I think what we have here could be called "Piltdown Syndrome" in part. That hoax, a human-like skull with ape-like jawbone, stood for 40 years amongst scientists till finally, seemingly now obviously, the artifacts were shown to be faked composition, actually human combined with orangutan. There just seems to be a certain gullibility amongst various scientists that is really pretty amazing.

In part the problem is also the well-known problem of what could be called the "Credible Witness/Deplorable Claim Syndrome". Some people just relish the attention, such as can be found in the old footage of the 1950's UFO craze where some try to get away with claiming they had been taken to other planets, coming up with wild names for them, etc. [I was unable to find any of this but I'm sure you've seen it] But in some cases, I feel this does not explain it. In the book we have a couple of instances where a credible person relates something along with a detail that really makes you wonder. Usually such a person claims to have been a skeptic, and often is presented as a person of character that does not fit with being a hoaxer. This has never been fully explainable, a phenomenon that also plagues Court systems the world over. Possibly witnesses themselves were hoaxed and didn't know it, and even are unaware of how retelling and retelling starts to alter their own versions. It has been proven that after a period of time a person can no longer correctly remember details of an event and starts to rely on what he has said before, losing track of alterations. Scientists should be more aware of this.

In part the problem is just that the scientists just do not realize they need to call in people who are more expert in debunking; often times the person to successfully do this is a magician.

I guess those of us who remain skeptics just will have to eat crow if any of the creatures are ever found. You can skip buying this book, unless you want to experience the advocacy. I admit I have a certain curiosity about such things, and such a book can really involve me. I seem to wind up enjoying this later reflection that wards off the wrong conclusions.

And, ha! My wife never caught me reading that book [in case you remember me mentioning that]. 

Fear and Loathing in Northern Virginia

I have some time off this week, and certainly had been thinking the thing to do was hit some of the more local new gambling opportunities for our area. My wife even suggested such a solo trip for me, not having time off herself. With that stamp of approval in my back pocket, I was practically out the door already. But then I started thinking about it. I'm not going to be able to go as far as Atlantic City or Philadelphia without doing an overnight, and I don't want to do that without planning the trip with her or someone, and there are no takers at the moment. I rethought Harrington Delaware, and convinced myself we are talking 2.5 hours to go the way I would like... it's just too far to suit me, and it wasn't *that* great the last time I went. Maybe if the buffet was better, you know?

Charles Town WV is a reasonable hour and a half for me, but from what I can determine, all I could expect there is overcrowded high minimum tables with possibly no Craps dealers in the morning. I have no interest in the slots, and as far as I can tell, there isnt even videopoker at all, even any with lousy paytables. The casino poker scene hasn't tempted me yet either. We'll call this the "Fear" part.

What can I say? Looks like any gambling in the near future will entail a trip with someone to Mohegan Sun or Atlantic City when that can be arranged; maybe not even this year!

And I was going to try Blackjack for the first time, too, damn it. My bankroll is gathering moths. I can't decide if I should be patting myself on the back for my restraint, kicking myself for not going anyway for an Escape I could sure as hell use, or what. One thing is for sure, the New Deal I thought we might be getting in our local area this summer hasn't panned out for me. We'll call the WV scene, and the distance to Harrington, the "Loathing", but it's the jackasses that have done what they've done in WV that are the focus of this contempt. I wonder how much company I have in that regard?



up or down longterm remains "down $1003"
below budget, $497 balance

I'm On The Record

On the record on this one:

Rams Running Back Steven Jackson will get in trouble with his gambling at some point in his career. Bad trouble.

Yesterday he had an interview on TV with the "welcome to vegas" sign as a backdrop [surely at his request] and you could see that one of his tattoos was also an image of that sign. Now I'm pretty sure the NFL tells these guys that if they want to gamble in the off season, they can't stop them, but that they have to keep it low key.

I'll keep this short: a little voice told me he already has caught the attention of the wrong people, and they will get to him. Whether or not this will be another Art Schlichter story I couldn't say, but I want to be on the record on this one, and I figured a blog post is a good way to do it.

Gai Pow Kapow!

The Seminole Casino in Tampa has no dice games, so it gave me an opportunity to try my hand at Gai Pow Poker. I had some reservations about it, as I suspected strongly from the WoO's free online game that typically you just lose money playing the straight game in a pattern I've called the Wobbly Downward Spiral. Yet some things held promise, particularly that it seemed I was going to be able to play it well. This as opposed to what practice revealed at video poker, in which errors abound for me.

Certainly I wanted to play something in addition to just checking out what was going on at this Casino from general interest. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't found a $10 table, but I did, and an empty one too as I'd hoped, so it was on. I immediately told the dealer I had played only online and that it was going to be obvious. This honesty didn't seem to get me anywhere, but the guy's English was not that good, so I'm not sure if he understood me fully. But he was helpful enough when I needed it, and starting off my luck was pretty good. At about the time I realized I had completely forgotten to ask to bank as much as possible, someone else sat down, and more sat down, and I took the advice offered here not to bank with other people at the table. This meant I was going to suffer the full 2.66% HE the entire time.

As a few of you assured me, though, I enjoyed playing anyway. It was interesting that I seemed to get no "bad beats" like the WoO's game likes to dish out on me, coming up with straights when I am dealt the full house that gets split into the 3 of a kind / pair, etc. On the other hand, I had practiced pretty hard to get the right play on being dealt 2 pair, yet I got dealt very few of these compared to the online game it seemed. It was no sweat asking the house way, or just other players who knew their stuff, if I had a hand I wasn't sure what was best with.

I was also interested to see that the other players never failed to make the Fortune side bet. Of course this gave them some hope for variance at the expense of losing their money faster if luck failed them, and sure enough, even though most bet the minimum $2 for side bets, this was seemingly enough to drain the bankroll, whereas my $200 was going to last I don't know how long before bust. Two guys were definitely betting more on this side bet, one was blown out quickly and the other hit something that paid $450 [I forget what he bet but it was always around $10]. He eventually left the table with that exact amount, and I remember he paid in with plenty, I would think just under that.

I didn't have any trouble blowing off suggestions I should be playing the side bet, even though the other players seemed to consider it unendurable to think they would have hit a good hand and not made the side bet. If it was pointed out to me my hand would have paid nicely on the Fortune bet, I would just say "and I was going to bet that too!" and left them to wonder why I didn't.

I played for 3 hours, pushing plenty during the middle time, and seeing the downward spiral kick in hard towards the end. Time to cash out while you get the satisfaction of coloring up. It was one of those times you say you broke about even, although I left a $25 tip to make up for the failure to tip last time out in Delaware. Did I never play the Fortune side bet? OK, I admit I blew $6 on that just for grins. Would I play this game again? Yes, I think I would, especially as a break from Craps.

longterm now "down $1003"
below budget, $497 balance